Wilhelm Frick | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Frick,c. 1940–45 | |
| Reichsminister of the Interior | |
| In office 30 January 1933 – 20 August 1943 | |
| President | Paul von Hindenburg (1933–1934) Adolf Hitler (1934–1943; asFührer) |
| Chancellor | Adolf Hitler |
| Preceded by | Franz Bracht |
| Succeeded by | Heinrich Himmler |
| General Plenipotentiary for Administration of the Reich | |
| In office 4 September 1938[1] – 20 August 1943 | |
| Appointed by | Adolf Hitler |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Heinrich Himmler[2] |
| Protector of Bohemia and Moravia | |
| In office 24 August 1943 – 8 May 1945 | |
| Appointed by | Adolf Hitler |
| Preceded by | Konstantin von Neurath(de jure) Kurt Daluege(de facto) |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Reichsministerwithout Portfolio | |
| In office 24 August 1943 – 30 April 1945 | |
| Additional positions | |
| 1939–1945 | Member of theCouncil of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich |
| 1934–1945 | Member of thePrussian State Council |
| 1933–1945 | Reichsleiter |
| 1933–1945 | Member of theReichstag (Nazi Germany) |
| 1924–1933 | Member of theReichstag (Weimar Republic) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1877-03-12)12 March 1877 Alsenz, Germany |
| Died | 16 October 1946(1946-10-16) (aged 69) Nuremberg, Germany |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Political party | Nazi Party |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 5 |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Attorney |
| Signature |  |
| Criminal information | |
| Criminal status | Executed |
| Convictions | Crimes of aggression War crimes Crimes against humanity |
| Trial | Nuremberg trials |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
Wilhelm Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician of theNazi Party (NSDAP) andconvicted war criminal. He served asMinister of the Interior inAdolf Hitler's cabinet from 1933 to 1943[3] and as the last governor of theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
As the head of theKriminalpolizei (criminal police) in Munich, Frick took part in Hitler's failedBeer Hall Putsch of 1923, for which he was convicted ofhigh treason. He managed to avoid imprisonment and soon afterwards became a leading figure of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in theReichstag. In 1930, Frick became the first Nazi to hold a ministerial-level post at any level in Germany in Thuringia as state Minister of the Interior.
After Hitler becameChancellor of Germany in 1933, Frick joined the new government and was named Minister of the Interior. Additionally, on 21 May 1935, Frick was namedGeneralbevollmächtigter für die Reichsverwaltung (General Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich).[4] He was instrumental in formulating laws that consolidated the Nazi regime (Gleichschaltung), as well as laws that defined theNazi racial policy, most notoriously theNuremberg Laws. On 30 August 1939, immediately prior to the outbreak of theSecond World War, Frick was appointed by Hitler to the six-personCouncil of Ministers for Defense of the Reich which operated as a war cabinet.[5] Following the rise of theSS, Frick gradually lost favour within the party, and in 1943 he was replaced byHeinrich Himmler as interior minister. Frick remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio until Hitler's death in 1945.
After World War II, Frick was tried and convicted ofwar crimes at theNuremberg trials andexecuted byhanging.
Born in thePalatinate municipality ofAlsenz, then part of theKingdom of Bavaria, Germany, the last of four children of Protestant teacher Wilhelm Frick sen. (d. 1918) and his wife Henriette (née Schmidt). He attended thegymnasium inKaiserslautern, passing hisAbitur exams in 1896. He went on studyingphilology at theUniversity of Munich, but soon after turned to study law atHeidelberg andHumboldt University of Berlin. He received his doctorate of law in 1901. He joined the Bavarian civil service in 1903, working as an attorney at theMunich Police Department. He was appointed aBezirksamtassessor inPirmasens in 1907 and became acting district executive in 1914. Rejected as unfit, Frick did not serve in World War I. He was promoted to the official rank of aRegierungsassessor and, at his own request, re-assumed his post at the Munich Police Department in 1917.[6]
On 25 April 1910, Frick married Elisabetha Emilie Nagel (1890–1978) in Pirmasens. They had two sons and a daughter. The marriage ended in an ugly divorce in 1934. A few weeks later, on 12 March, Frick remarried inMünchberg Margarete Schultze-Naumburg (1896–1960), the former wife of the NaziReichstag MPPaul Schultze-Naumburg. Margarete gave birth to a son and a daughter.
In Munich, Frick witnessed the end of the war and theGerman Revolution of 1918–1919. He sympathized with right-wingFreikorps paramilitary units. Chief of PoliceErnst Pöhner introduced him toAdolf Hitler, whom he helped willingly with obtaining permission to hold political rallies and demonstrations.
Elevated to the rank of anOberamtmann and head of the Political department of the Munich police from 1923, he and Pöhner participated in Hitler's failedBeer Hall Putsch on 9 November. Frick tried to suppress theState Police's operation, wherefore he was arrested and imprisoned, and tried for aiding and abettinghigh treason by thePeople's Court in April 1924. After several months in custody, he was given a suspended sentence of 15 months' imprisonment and was dismissed from his police job. Later during the disciplinary proceedings, the dismissal was declared unfair and revoked, on the basis that his treasonous intention had not been proven. Frick went on to work at the Munichsocial insurance office from 1926 onwards, in the rank of aRegierungsrat 1st class by 1933.
In the aftermath of the putsch, Wilhelm Frick was elected a member of the GermanReichstag parliament in thefederal election of May 1924. He had been nominated by theNational Socialist Freedom Movement, anelectoral list of the far-rightGerman Völkisch Freedom Party and thenbannedNazi Party. On 1 September 1925, Frick joined the re-established Nazi Party. On 20 May 1928, he was one of the first 12 deputies elected to theReichstag as Nazi Party members. He associated himself with the radicalGregor Strasser; making his name by aggressive anti-democratic andantisemitic Reichstag speeches, he climbed to the post of the Naziparliamentary group leader (Fraktionsführer) in 1928.[7] He would continue to be elected to theReichstag in every subsequent election in the Weimar and Nazi regimes. First elected from the Nazi electoral list in 1928, he was returned as a deputy from electoral constituency 27 (Palatinate) in 1930 and from constituency 12 (Thuringia) thereafter.[8]
In1929 Thuringian state election, as the price for joining thecoalition government of theLand (state) ofThuringia, the NSDAP received the state ministries of the Interior and Education. On 23 January 1930, Frick was appointed to these ministries, becoming the first Nazi to hold a ministerial-level post at any level in Germany (though he remained a member of the Reichstag).[9] Frick used his position to dismissCommunist andSocial Democratic officials and replace them with Nazi Party members, so Thuringia's federal subsidies were temporarily suspended by Reich MinisterCarl Severing. Frick also appointed the eugenicistHans F. K. Günther as a professor ofsocial anthropology at theUniversity of Jena, banned several newspapers, and bannedpacifist drama and anti-war films such asAll Quiet on the Western Front. He was removed from office by a Social Democraticmotion of no confidence in the ThuringianLandtag parliament on 1 April 1931.
When Reich presidentPaul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on30 January 1933, Frick joined his government asReichsminister of the Interior. Together with Reichstag PresidentHermann Göring, he was one of only two NaziReichsministers in the original Hitler Cabinet, and the only one who actually had a portfolio; Göring served asminister without portfolio until 5 May. Though Frick held a key position, especially in organizing thefederal elections of March 1933, he initially had far less power than his counterparts in the rest of Europe. Notably, he had no authority over the police; in Germany law enforcement has traditionally been astate and local matter. Indeed, the main reason that Hindenburg andFranz von Papen agreed to give the Interior Ministry to the Nazis was that it was almost powerless at the time. A mighty rival arose in the establishment of thePropaganda Ministry underJoseph Goebbels on 13 March.
Frick's power dramatically increased as a result of theReichstag Fire Decree and theEnabling Act of 1933. The provision of the Reichstag Fire Decree giving the cabinet the power to take over state governments on its own authority was actually his idea; he saw the fire as a chance to increase his power and begin the process of Nazifying the country.[10] He was responsible for drafting many of theGleichschaltung laws that consolidated the Nazi regime.[4] Within two weeks of the Enabling Act's passage, Frick helped draft the "Second Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich" (7 April 1933) appointingReichsstatthalter (Reich Governors) to take over the state governments. He also initiated and drafted theLaw Against the Formation of Parties (14 July 1933) that formally made the NSDAP the only legal party in Germany. Under the 30 January 1934 "Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich", which converted Germany into a highly centralized state, state parliaments were dissolved and the newly implementedReichsstatthalter were made directly responsible to him. He also drafted theLaw on the Abolition of the Reichsrat (14 February 1934) that abolished the upper chamber of the Reich parliament.[11] Frick also was made a member ofHans Frank'sAcademy for German Law.[12]
On 10 October 1933, Hitler appointed Frick aReichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. On 1 May 1934, he replacedMinister-President Göring asPrussian Minister of the Interior, which gave him control over the police in Prussia. As a member of the Prussian cabinet, he also became anex officio member of thePrussian State Council.[13] By 1935, he also had near-total control over local government. He had the sole power to appoint the mayors of all municipalities with populations greater than 100,000 (except for thecity states ofBerlin andHamburg, where Hitler reserved the right to appoint the mayors himself if he deemed it necessary). He also had considerable influence over smaller towns as well; while their mayors were appointed by the state governors, as mentioned earlier the governors were responsible to him.
Frick was instrumental in theracial policy of Nazi Germany drafting laws againstJewish citizens, like the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" and the notoriousNuremberg Laws in September 1935.[7] Already in July 1933, he had implemented theLaw for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring includingforced sterilizations, which later culminated in the killings of theAction T4 "euthanasia" programme supported by his ministry. Frick also took a leading part inGermany's re-armament in violation of the 1919Versailles Treaty. He drafted laws introducing universal military conscription and extending theWehrmacht service law toAustria after the 1938Anschluss, as well as to the "Sudetenland" territories of theFirst Czechoslovak Republic annexed according to theMunich Agreement.
In the summer of 1938 Frick was named the patron(Schirmherr) of theDeutsches Turn- und Sportfest inBreslau, a patriotic sports festival attended by Hitler and much of the Nazi leadership. In this event he presided the ceremony of "handing over" the newNazi Reich Sports League (NSRL) standard toReichssportführerHans von Tschammer und Osten, marking the further Nazification of sports in Germany. On 11 November 1938, Frick promulgated the Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons.
From the mid-to-late 1930s Frick lost favour irreversibly within the Nazi Party after a power struggle involving attempts to resolve the lack of coordination within the Reich government.[14] For example, in 1933 he tried to restrict the widespread use of "protective custody" orders that were used to send people to concentration camps, only to be begged off byReichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler. His power was greatly reduced in June 1936 when Hitler named Himmler the Chief of German Police, which effectively united the police with the SS. On paper, Frick was Himmler's immediate superior. In fact, the police were now independent of Frick's control, since the SS was responsible only to Hitler.[15][16] A long-running power struggle between the two culminated in Frick's being replaced by Himmler asReichsminister of the Interior in August 1943. However, he remained in the cabinet as aReichsminister without portfolio. Besides Hitler, he andLutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk were the only members of theThird Reich's cabinet to serve continuously from Hitler's appointment as Chancellor until his death.
Frick's replacement asReichsminister of the Interior did not reduce the growing administrative chaos and infighting between party and state agencies.[17] Frick was then appointed asProtector of Bohemia and Moravia, making him Hitler's personal representative in theCzech lands. Its capitalPrague, where Frick used ruthless methods to counter dissent, was one of the lastAxis-held cities to fall at theend of World War II in Europe.[18]
Frick was arrested, and was arraigned at theNuremberg trials, where he was the only defendant besidesRudolf Hess who refused to testify on his own behalf.[19] Frick was convicted of planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression,war crimes andcrimes against humanity, and for his role, as Minister of the Interior, in formulating theEnabling Act and theNuremberg Laws—laws under which people were deported toconcentration camps, many of them being murdered there. Frick was also accused of being one of the most senior people responsible for the existence of the concentration camps.[20]
Frick was sentenced to death on 1 October 1946, and washanged at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October. Of his execution, journalist Joseph Kingsbury-Smith wrote:
The sixth man to leave his prison cell and walk with handcuffed wrists to the death house was 69-year-old Wilhelm Frick. He entered the execution chamber at 2.05 am, six minutes afterRosenberg had been pronounced dead. He seemed the least steady of any so far and stumbled on the thirteenth step of the gallows. His only words were, "Long live eternal Germany", before he was hooded and dropped through the trap.[21]
His body, along with those of the other nine executed men and the corpse ofHermann Göring, was cremated at theOstfriedhof Cemetery inMunich, and the ashes were scattered in the riverIsar.[22][23][24]
Quotations related toWilhelm Frick at Wikiquote
Media related toWilhelm Frick at Wikimedia Commons| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | German Minister of the Interior 1933–1943 | Succeeded by |
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| Preceded by | Protector of Bohemia and Moravia 1943–1945 | Succeeded by Office abolished |
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